Researchers find five or more hours of daily gaming/web use tied to prolonged sadness, suicide attempts among teens; two hours or less sees decreases on both fronts.
A newly published article in The Official Journal of the American Association of Suicidology lends further credence to the notion of “All things in moderation.” According to the paper, teens who spent more than 5 hours each school day playing games or surfing the Internet were more likely to report stretches of prolonged sadness, as well as suicide attempts. On the other hand, those who spent two hours or less gaming and surfing the web each school day were less likely to report sadness and suicide attempts than those who spent no time doing either activity.
The article, lead authored by Dr. Erick Messias of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Department of Psychiatry, examines the results of the Centers for Disease Control’s 2007 and 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Surveys, which included more than 30,000 questionnaires completed by US public and private high school students in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The YRBS includes questions on a wide array of behaviors, like sexual intercourse, drug use, not wearing seat belts, and amount of exercise.
The survey included one question about sadness: ” During the past 12 months, did you ever feel so sad or hopeless almost every day for 2 weeks or more in a row that you stopped doing some usual activities?’’ There were also four questions about suicide. The suicide questions asked if respondents had seriously considered, planned, or attempted suicide in the last year, with the fourth question asking if there was a suicide attempt that required medical treatment.
“Youths reporting moderate video game/Internet use (one hour or less daily) are significantly less likely to report two weeks of sadness in the previous 12-month period, compared to those reporting no use at all,” according to the paper. “However, youths reporting five hours or more of daily video game/Internet use are significantly more likely to report two weeks of sadness over the previous year when compared to teens reporting no video game use.”
Similar findings were reported on the topic of suicide. In both the 2007 and 2009 surveys, Dr. Messias found those who reported spending an average of five or more hours online or playing games during the week were more likely to answer in the affirmative to all four questions about suicide, with the increase in considering and planning a suicide attempt being statistically significant in both surveys. The 2009 survey also suggested that those who crossed the five-hour threshold were 1.5 times more likely to report an attempt or an attempt requiring treatment as their nongaming, non-web-surfing counterparts.
However, a little bit of gaming and Internet use each day was associated with decreased sadness and suicidal thoughts or actions. In the 2009 survey, two hours or less of gaming/web use a day showed statistically significant decreases for suicide attempts, with attempts requiring medical treatment half as likely. The researchers cited a “potential protective effect” of an hour or less of daily gaming use in regard to sadness but suggested it could also be “an artifact due to risk factors for depression, such as poverty and disadvantage, that could be linked to no access to video game or Internet outside school.”
The paper also looked at the responses of students who reported watching five hours or more of television a day. However, the researchers found “no association” between excessive TV use and prolonged sadness or affirmative responses to suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
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